🚀 go-pugleaf

[posted and mailed]

> THE BOARD:
> Unfortunately there is no information on the board itself other than
> "FAB 0005478 REV B".  For example, it does NOT say anything like "hard
> disk controller" or anything like that whatsoever. 

Hi again Chris,

As the old saying goes, a picture really is worth a thousand words. :-)  
Looking at the photo you posted, I see instantly what's wrong...  The 
controller in the photo actually isn't an Amiga hard drive controller at 
all... it's a regular (albiet old) IBM PC hard driver controller.  You can 
tell by the card-edge connector (the part of the card that fits in to the 
slot in the motherboard).  Amiga cards always have the card edge connector 
at the front of the card, i.e. the end that doesn't have the metal 
faceplate.  IBM PC cards have just the opposite - their card edge 
connectors are at the back of the card, right by the metal faceplate.  
(That also explains why the card isn't clearly marked, since as I said 
before, in my experience Amiga controllers almost always are.) :-)

So you're probably asking yourself what the heck that would be doing in 
your Amiga, since it's not an Amiga hard drive controller.  There are 
actually two possible answers:

(1) All the high-end Amigas (i.e. the 2000, 2500, 3000(T), 4000(T)) had 
both Amiga ("Zorro") slots in them, and IBM PC ("ISA") slots in them.  The 
ISA slots couldn't be used by the Amiga directly, but by putting a special 
card called a bridgeboard in to the Amiga (basically just an IBM PC on a 
card), you could run MS-DOS on the Amiga, and thus MS-DOS software.  Such 
cards really were like a computer in a computer though - they would use the 
Amiga's monitor and keyboard, but the Amiga itself wouldn't be able to 
access the hard drive, or any of the other IBM cards plugged in to the 
system, only the bridgeboard could.  You'd usually have a separate drive 
for the Amiga side of things.  At least I beleive that's how they worked, I 
never had one myself.  Perhaps someone else could back me up on that.  This 
is most likely the setup you have, as they were quite popular back in the 
day.

(2) The other possibility is that you have a special compatability card, 
that allows your Amiga to directly access cards in it's ISA slots.  Unlike 
the bridgeboards I mentioned above, these cards didn't have an IBM 
compatible microprocessor on them, and did not allow you to run MS-DOS or 
any MS-DOS software.  They simply connected the ISA slots in the Amiga to 
the Zorro slots, so you could use (inexpensive) IBM PC cards in your Amiga, 
assuming you had the right Amiga device drivers for them (such 
compatability cards usually came with drivers for popular IBM PC cards such 
as hard drive controllers and serial ports.)  The GoldenGate II was one 
such card, and I believe there were a couple of others.

In any event, this would explain why that 2090A disk that you have couldn't 
see the controller and hard drive - it's DEFINATELY not a 2090A controller.

So, the next step is to find out what sort of bridge card you have.  That 
will tell us if you can in fact use that controller with the Amiga directy, 
or only from the bridgeboard.  This again should be easy, as it will be the 
only card in the system that has BOTH Zorro and ISA card-edge connectors.  
If you could see what's written on that card, then we should know where to 
go from there.  If by some chance you don't have any sort of bridgecard 
(i.e. if someone took it out before giving you that Amiga), then you 
definately won't be able to use taht hard drive and controller, since it's 
not natively Amiga compatible.)


> Also.. as you can hopefully tell from the picture, the harddrive has 2
> ribbons coming out of it.  One is a wide ribbon, and the second ribon
> is approximately half the size.  

That would make it an MFM drive.  They were popular back in the XT and AT 
days of the IBM PC.  Commodore made the 2090A controller, which as someone 
else already mentioned supported both MFM and SCSI.  Another company, 
Spirit Technologies, also made an MFM controller for the Amiga.  (I 
actually had one of these.)  There were probably others as well.

Given that it's MFM, it's probably only a 20, 30, or 40MB (not GB!) drive.  
Toward the end of MFM's lifespan, There were larger MFM drives 
manufactuered, but they weren't very popular, since by then most people 
were buying SCSI or IDE drives.  MFM drives are also really, really slow.  
(I don't mean to sound pessimistic, I just want you to know what you're 
getting in to.  Best case is that this will be a very small, very slow hard 
drive, so if it does end up being a bear to get working, you may decide 
it's not worth the bother.)


> When I turn on the computer, the harddrive does sound like its
> working. Hopefully I just need the necessary software to start using
> it. 

That's probably the case.  As I said, that 2090A disk is definately the 
wrong software, and this is also definately not a standard setup that will 
work with the AmigaDOS hdtoolbox utility, so we can't yet say that the 
drive is bad.


> In that regard, if you could possibly MAIL me whatever disks you think
> I need to start using the harddrive, I would be absolutely grateful.
> Unfortunatley, even my workbench 1.2 disk now is getting errors. 
> Therefore, I basically have absolutely NO software whatseover for my
> amiga 2000 computer and/or harddrive.  Accordingly, if you could send
> me the necessary software, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do so.
> 
> Lastly, if possible, please also send me a program that will enable me
> to transfer software between my PC computer and Amiga cmputer.  I
> believe I have the necessary cable (the same cable I use to transfer
> software via the parallel port between two PC computers).  However, I
> do not have the software for the Amiga computer to do so.

I'll send you a set of AmigaDOS disks with a utility called MessyDOS set up 
on them.  This is basically a driver that lets you read and write MS-DOS 
formatted double density floppy disks in the Amiga directly, without any 
special drives or hardware.  It's very handy.  I don't have any software 
that will work with a parallel cable connection (such software does exist, 
I just don't have it), but you'll probably find MessyDOS more convienient 
anyway.  You can just download whatever you need on to a floppy on your PC, 
then chuck the floppy disk in to the Amiga and access it like a regular 
Amiga disk.  I use it all the time.  Then you can just download whatever 
else you want from the net.

I still don't know exactly what software you'll need to get that hard drive 
working, again if it's even possible to use it from the Amiga itself, and 
not just from a bridgeboard, but I'll get the AmigaDOS/MessyDOS disks ready 
for you and mail them out tomorrow.


 - Jeff


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